Woman living near Goodner hideout lost son to violence

Eric Goodner slept in a juvenile detention cell Wednesday night, but for nearly three weeks, the whereabouts of the 17-year-old murder suspect were a mystery.

Metro police and U.S. marshals surrounded an east Nashville apartment complex and arrested Goodner in the shooting death of Pearl-Cohn High School student Johnathan Johnson.

The woman who lives across the hall from where Goodner was captured shared details about her experience during the arrest.

Elaine Warfield has lived at Village Place for the past eight years, so when she heard a commotion outside her door, she looked to see a hallway swarming with law enforcement.

"I came to the door. They said, 'Go back inside,' so I went back inside," Warfield said.

Warfield said about three weeks ago a young woman and two children moved into apartment C-130 across the hall, which was about the same time police believe Goodner shot and killed Johnson as the victim waited to catch his school bus.

Warfield said she never saw Goodner at the apartment - just the woman and two children.

In fact, police said Goodner was alone Wednesday when he was taken into custody as Warfield watched from her peephole.

"All the police had the door open and took him away," she said.

The mother of three said it's scary that Goodner was living right across the hall from her, and had she known it, she would have told authorities.

"They can say what they want to say. Yeah, I would've told," she said.

That kind of fearlessness is born of experience. In December 1995, her son, Jerimayer Warfield, walked to what was then the Seventh Avenue Market to buy an ice cream sandwich. Out of nowhere, a car came screeching by and rounds of gunfire left the 12-year-old dead in the crossfire, still clutching his ice cream treat inside the store.

Three people were arrested, and Elaine Warfield now carries a big portrait of her son wherever she goes.

She said she is angry that nearly 20 years after the murder of her own child, children are still being gunned down in Nashville.

And it is chilling, she said, that Goodner was hiding out so close - just a few steps from her own front door.

"I live here. He could've grabbed me. There are children around here," she said.

Goodner is expected to appear at a juvenile court hearing Friday. He faces a charge of criminal homicide.